Insurgency, Terrorism, and Transnational

LIF001_Frontmatter 6/26/08 1:26 PM Page i

TRANSNATIONAL TRENDS: Middle Eastern and Asian Views

Amit Pandya Ellen Laipson Editors

July 2008 LIF001_Frontmatter 6/26/08 1:26 PM Page ii

ISBN: 0-9770023-4-9 Cover photos: Women of the Islamic Universities, Gaza, © Rula Halawan/ Sygma/Corbis; Philippine farmer at dried water pond, ROMEO GACAD/AFP/Getty Images; Man at Vishwa Hindu Parishad rally, New Delhi, India, PRAKASH SINGH/AFP/Getty Images Cover design by Rock Creek Creative

The Henry L. Stimson Center 1111 19th Street, NW, 12th Floor Washington, DC 20036 Telephone: 202-223-5956 Fax: 202-238-9604 www.stimson.org LIF001_ch6 6/26/08 1:36 PM Page 114

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INSURGENCY,TERRORISM, AND TRANSNATIONAL CRIME IN SOUTH ASIA

V. Balachandran

his paper examines the patterns that characterize terrorism, insurgency, and Tcrime in South Asia and the degree to which the three phenomena overlap. The contribution of poverty, bad governance, and corruption to these security threats is explored, as well as their transborder dimension. Terrorism here is understood as the use or threat of violence against civilians for the accomplishment of political objectives. The scope of the present analysis includes violence by non-state actors as well as covert state collusion in non-state violence. Insurgencies traditionally are viewed as armed groups with some public support and relative freedom of control and movement in their areas of operations. In almost all cases, they espouse and/or promote an ideology based on class, identity, or other motivations for overthrowing or displacing governments. They may use terrorism for this purpose. Transnational crimes are crimes committed by professional cartels spanning more than one country, usually with no primary political or religious motive. These cartels engage in activities such as extortion, irregular financial transactions like money laundering and hawala (an informal system of money transfers, suspected of being used to fund terrorist operations), contract killing, settling money dis- putes, and in some cases trafficking in drugs, weapons, and humans. Investigation of cases of terrorism and/or transnational crime is hampered by poor bilateral relations in the region. Terrorism and transborder crime cannot be prevented unless there is an effective system in South Asia for regional cooperation. History has repeatedly shown terrorism and crime to be of equal concern to all the states of the region. Within all these countries, intelligence, enforcement, administrative, and judicial organs are in a state of decay due to politicization, bad governance, and corruption, leading to insufficient justice delivery systems. The resulting lawlessness directly contributes to general disaffection and emboldens terrorism, insurgency, and organized crime, with transnational effects.

FACTORS SHAPING POPULAR ATTITUDES TOWARD VIOLENCE The history of South Asia has had an important effect on perceptions of the legitimacy of recent acts of violence. Terrorism has historical antecedents in the early struggle in Bengal against the British rule and the social and economic injustices

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it perpetrated. Rural insurgency in the subcontinent traces its roots to armed mobilization around local grievances in the 1946 Telengana Agrarian Uprising in Central India. This in turn sowed the seeds for the modern Naxalites. Established in 1967, the group metamorphosed into the People’s War Group (PWG) in the 1970s and 1980s and then merged with the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) to become the CPI (Maoist) in 2004. During the second half of the twentieth century, the distinctions between insurgents and terrorists blurred, and a degree of public sympathy was bestowed on those claiming to be “freedom fighters.” To this day, many human rights and economic justice activists in India do not consider Naxalite attacks to be terrorism because the cause is “justifiable.” The same might be said of various Pakistanis’ attitudes toward jihadis operating in Indian Jammu and Kashmir, in Afghanistan, or even within Pakistan. The roots of this ambivalence lie in the ambiguity about political violence that marked the political history of the region under imperialism. Casual observers wonder about the high level of civil conflict in the country of Mahatma Gandhi, the architect of modern nonviolent political resistance. Ironically, Mohammed Ali Jinnah (who eventually led the Muslim League’s demand for a separate nation), while still a member of the Indian National Congress leadership, opposed Gandhi’s mass mobilization tactics on the grounds inter alia that they would lead to violence. Compounding the irony is that the mass mobilization from which Jin- nah kept his distance was one in favor of a Muslim cause—namely, the restoration of the Turkish Caliphate. That the Muslim League, under Jinnah’s leadership, should eventually have availed itself of the tactical convenience of alliance with violent mobilizations in support of the establishment of Pakistan merely completes the circle of irony. Surely these antecedents are not immaterial to contemporary cultural attitudes to political violence in either nation. The ability of the state to deliver welfare, services, and justice through its administrative and judicial organs is critical to maintaining the loyalty of the population and thus the legitimacy of the government. If this mechanism breaks down, there is danger of marginalized groups resorting to violence, including terrorism. Much of the left-wing violence in India and Nepal originated in this sort of neglect. Mani Shankar Iyer, Union Minister for Panchayati Raj, told the press in Mumbai on June 18, 2007 that the Naxalite movement was spreading in Maharashtra because the local government was not implementing rural development schemes. If the gap between government agencies and marginalized sections of society is wide, the prospect of marginalization metamorphosing into antistate violence, in the form of terrorism or insurgencies, becomes considerable. NGOs may fill the gap as connectors between the administration and marginalized sections of society. In this connection, the role of the Mohalla Committee in Mum- bai deserves special mention. Established in the wake of 1993 Hindu-Muslim communal riots, this NGO was able to act as a bridge between the two communities and LIF001_ch6 6/26/08 1:36 PM Page 116

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raise their confidence level to such an extent that there were no further incidents of communal violence in the sprawling city, despite riots occurring in the neighboring state of Gujarat. The role of this NGO in bringing communities together and fostering a feeling of participation among minorities may have been a significant factor in stemming what could have been an uncontrollable vicious cycle of community conflict, terrorist recruitment, and terrorist attacks. (In Kerala state in India, with close to equal numbers of Hindus, Muslims, and Christians, there is little social violence or terrorism. Various sections of Kerala society have a great deal of social and political empowerment, which functions as insurance against terrorism or insurgency.) Acts of mitigation such as those carried out by the Mohalla Committee can be considered manifestations of democracy. Yet there is not a simple correlation between democracy and social peace. Indeed, a democracy has inherent difficulties in tackling terrorism and insurgency. Strong-arm measures cannot be taken, nor can dra- conian laws be enacted, since such measures turn key populations against the government. Even if terrorists are not bound by human rights rules, a democratic setup cannot ignore such considerations. It can be argued that India’s democracy did not prevent the strong-arm measures that destroyed terrorism and insurgency in Punjab. However, the fact that 700 Punjab police officers are now facing in- quiries or prosecution for human rights violations cannot be ignored. Also, every encounter or arrest, even by the armed forces in special circumstances, has to be properly documented and detainees brought to the criminal courts for trial. Evi- dence in such cases is difficult to get. The police have no control over judicial delays, which tend to militate against prosecution since witnesses may lose interest or be intimidated. An important part of the enabling environment for antistate violence in almost all South Asian societies is the tolerance and sympathy, among those social movements and critics of the state that are nonviolent as a matter of principle, for those who employ violence. This curious phenomenon relies in large part on the shared perception, by nonviolent and violent actors alike, of the state’s dubious legitimacy and responsiveness to popular will. Despite their very different tactical choices and their ethical opposition to the use of political violence, many nonviolent critics feel a high degree of antagonism toward an unresponsive and unjust state. Activists observe that their nonviolent demands are met with neglect or even contempt, whereas those who take up arms are often to be found in negotiations with the state, as has been the case in North-East India. Finally, recent findings from India suggest caution in accepting the conventional wisdom about the motives of individuals engaging in violent antistate activities. Vi- olence in Punjab between 1981 and 2000 led to 21,612 deaths. The common im- pression was that discrimination against the Sikh religion and the consequent Sikh religious militancy had led to this terrorism. However, a 1999 study by academics Harish K. Puri, Paramjit Singh Judge, and Jagrup Singh Sekhon, of Guru Nanak LIF001_ch6 6/26/08 1:36 PM Page 117

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Dev University, Amritsar, led to a different conclusion. Three hundred and twenty- three participants in terrorist violence in 28 affected villages in four districts gave the following reasons for participation: 38 percent for adventure and thrills; 21 percent because of peer pressure by other terrorists; 12 percent for looting and smuggling; 5 percent believed in the cause of “Khalistan,” an independent Sikh nation; 3 percent were under the charismatic influence of Sant Bhindranwale; and 4 percent were upset by the assault on the Golden Temple and the anti-Sikh riots that followed the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. This study also suggests caution in drawing conclusions about growing religious extremism in South Asia.

INSURGENCY In North-East India, insurgencies in Nagaland and Manipur started immediately after Indian Independence, as a sizable faction of locals did not accept the merger with the Indian Union. Poor state responses, including bad governance, encour- aged other separatist political movements such as the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU), which in turn led to the creation of insurgencies such as the United Lib- eration Front of Assam (ULFA). Migration from Bangladesh exacerbated ethnic insecurities about cultural identity, demographic inundation, and competition for livelihoods, helping sustain the insurgencies in Tripura, Assam, and Meghalaya. Insurgencies in South Asia have often gained momentum through promotion and support from neighboring states or sympathetic local government agencies. How- ever, once started, insurgencies are difficult to control and have often had signifi- cantly destabilizing effects on the states that supported them. Fear of a communist takeover in Afghanistan in the wake of the Daud coup in 1973 led to support from successive Pakistani governments, starting with that of Prime Minister Z. A. Bhutto, for the consolidation of Afghan Islamic forces operating from Pakistan. The roots of a variety of current problems in both Pakistan and Afghanistan are linked to the support by successive state actors for violent non-state organizations. This is also the case in Indian Jammu and Kashmir, where Pakistani government support for insurgency and terrorism has added to the tension and violence of the conflict. Similarly, Indian central government collusion with extremists was seen as an important facilitator of the Khalistan insurgency in Indian Punjab. Among the characteristics of the “Khalistan” movement are many typically associated with insurgencies in the region: ethnic grievances, rural insurgency, terrorist attacks on civilians outside the primary area of conflict, enmeshment with organized crime, transnational networks, and foreign support. As insurgencies grow, they often take on a life of their own. In Burma, independence from the British in 1948 facilitated a communist insurgency in ethnic minority areas, and the communists almost captured power in the late 1940s and 1950s. The insurgency developed into a form of ethnic rebellion that lasted through the 1990s and may still be observed today, albeit in weakened form. In Sri Lanka, an LIF001_ch6 6/26/08 1:36 PM Page 118

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North-East India: Identity, Integration, Migration, and Conflict

Perpetually subordinated to the Kashmir issue by analysts and policy makers, the long-running insurgencies in India’s northeast region may eventually prove to be more dangerous, hemorrhaging the Indian state from within and destabilizing its neighbors. Isolated geographically, culturally, and politically from the Indian heart- land, the eight states—Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, and Tripura—have seen “perfect storm” conditions of ethnic diver- sity, illegal immigration, poor governance, and economic deprivation. This has given rise to dozens of armed groups such as the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), United National Liberation Front (UNLF) in Manipur, All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF) in Tripura, National Socialist Council of NagalimÐIsak Swu-Muivah (NSCN- IM) in Nagaland, and Achik National Volunteer Council (ANVC) in Meghalaya. Start- ing in 1952, these long-running insurgencies have resulted in at least 40,000 casualties since 1979. Their demands range from autonomous states within India to secession. With a history of de facto independence prior to political assimilation into India, many groups in North-East India have felt themselves to be under threat. Their cultures, traditional livelihoods, territories, and economic opportunities have felt threatened by illegal immigration from Bangladesh, as well as internal migration of other ethnic groups from other parts of India. They have accused the government of strip- ping the region of its mineral resources, ignoring economic development, and flooding the area with migrants. This has given rise to an ethno-tribal revanchism that ineffi- cient and corrupt governance has not only failed to resolve but has exacerbated. The situation in Assam presents a snapshot of the complexity of the problem. The ULFA insurgency has its roots in ethnic Assamese concerns about large flows of illegal migrants from Bangladesh through the 1970s and the resulting competition for land and jobs. What started as an anti-outsider and anti-foreigner movement has metamorphosed into a demand for an independent Assam. Concurrently, the state has also seen intertribal conflict, with another indigenous tribe, the Bodos, opposing the ethnic Assamese. Once the majority along the northern bank of the Brahmaputra River, the Bodos have been reduced to a minority, giving rise to the movement for a Bodo homeland carved from Assam. Although the main Bodo insurgent group, the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), signed a ceasefire with the government in 2005 that held through 2007, there is increasing frustration on its part with the government’s failure to address its concerns. This represents the trend through the region. The government’s attempts at dialogue with the insurgent groups have met with only sporadic success, as a result of the unviability of the demands owing to the complexity of demographic distribution over particular territories. Neighboring countries have been drawn into the North-East’s conflicts as well. In- surgent groups have sought safe havens across the borders in Myanmar, Bhutan, and Bangladesh, destabilizing the border regions and leading to joint operations between their respective military forces and Indian troops.

ethnic competition over employment opportunities in the 1950s took the form of a controversy over the official language, spawning both a Sinhalese anti-Tamil movement and a Tamil ethnic movement. These in turn led to an armed Tamil insurgency, which now shows no signs of being amenable to any form of negotiated settlement. Armed Tamil groups that have agreed to a political settlement have LIF001_ch6 6/26/08 1:36 PM Page 119

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been sidelined by the binary opposition between the armed forces and the armed rebellion. In Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Burma, insurgencies have as- sumed the shape of regular war. Most insurgencies in this region had a substantial popular base initially, but many have lost public support as the authoritarian behavior of their leadership has alien- ated supporters. Also, the insurgencies’ original raison d’etre has become less rel- evant because of constantly changing social, economic, and political situations. Therefore, these groups have often had to seek public support through intimida- tion and coercion. It has been observed that insurgency and terrorism are “good business” for the leadership. Several insurgent formations, such as Naga and As- samese groups, extort funds from citizens, local bodies, traders, and other agencies, unimpeded by local administrations. In the absence of a strong state presence, insurgencies can operate as forms of local government. The Nagas run a parallel government, undertaking tax collec- tion as well as rendering instant justice in areas they control. Leftist groups like the Indian Naxalites or Nepali Maoists render quick justice and undertake small development projects. In Nepal, there are complaints that the Maoists do not allow government officials and other groups into their territory, despite having rejoined the interim coalition government after originally joining it in January 2007 and then leaving in September 2007 over a dispute arising out of the abolition of the monarchy. In Pakistan’s border areas such as Swat and Waziristan, groups have established varying degrees of administrative and ideological control. As can be seen, in the South Asia region, classical differences among terrorism, insurgency, and guerilla warfare have blurred, and different groups adopt any con- venient means, including frontal assaults on targets, to achieve their aims. An integral feature of the situation is the easy availability of illegal weapons and funds. Despite regulatory restrictions on financial transactions, militants and criminals are able to transfer funds relatively freely. The routine extortion of “taxes” from local industries and businesses goes unchecked.

INEFFECTIVE REGIONAL AND BILATERAL COOPERATION ON TERRORISM AND ORGANIZED CRIME A nexus among terrorism, extremist ideology, and organized crime is apparent. The 1993 serial bomb blasts in Bombay were carried out by the Dawood Ibrahim organization, the most powerful criminal gang in Bombay, to avenge the killing of Muslims there after Hindu zealots destroyed the Babri Masjid (Mosque of Babri) in Uttar Pradesh. In February 1998, serial blasts were carried out in Coimbatore in South India on the orders of criminal turned fundamentalist S. A. Basha, to intim- idate Hindu traders transgressing on Muslim commercial turf. In July 2001, the shoe tycoon Partha Roy Burman was abducted in Kolkata by the criminal Aftab Ansari for a huge ransom, which was delivered to Omar Sayed Sheikh of Jaish-e- Mohammed and later sent to Mohammad Atta before 9/11. LIF001_ch6 6/26/08 1:36 PM Page 120

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Two Pakistani nationals, Mohammed Asif of Karachi and Mohammed Rafiq Haji of Multan, were arrested by Mumbai police on December 30, 1999 for robbing a bank in suburban Mumbai in October in order to fund the hijacking of Indian Air- lines flight 814 from Kathmandu on December 24, 1999. This hijacking had international ramifications, since the Pakistani hijackers succeeded in forcing the release of three terrorists from Indian jails: Maulana Mohammad Masood Azar, chief of Jaish-e-Mohammed; Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, leader of Al-Umar; and Omar Sayed Sheikh, a British-born militant who is reported to have been involved in the killing of American journalist Daniel Pearl in January 2002. There is a growing realization throughout the world that transborder terrorism and organized crime cannot be controlled without bilateral or regional cooperation. National leadership in the South Asia region recognizes the need for such cooperation, but is unable to translate the principle into action owing to historical bilateral suspicions. The Regional Convention on Suppression of Terrorism was signed in Kathmandu in November 1987 and ratified by the Third SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) Summit in 1988. It committed member states to denying safe haven to terrorists and insurgents and to extraditing or prosecuting alleged terrorists. Member states also agreed to exchange information, intelligence, and expertise. As a result, the SAARC Terrorist Offences Monitoring Desk (STOMD) was set up in Colombo to collate, analyze, and disseminate information about terrorist incidents. The Eighth SAARC Summit in May 1995 ex- pressed serious concern over terrorism. The Fourteenth SAARC Summit in New Delhi in April 2007 decided to implement existing conventions on terrorism and enhance cooperation among member states in tackling organized crime. The Home Ministers’ meeting in Delhi in October 2007 resolved to take “proactive and sustained” measures to implement the SAARC Regional Convention on Sup- pression of Terrorism and Additional Protocol. Members also agreed to accel- erate implementation of the Draft Convention on mutual legal assistance in criminal matters and to upgrade the existing mechanism for cooperation and exchange of information. In actual practice, however, no effective coordination is occurring because of a “trust deficit” among SAARC member countries. The only progress made through the SAARC mechanism has been an increase in the frequency of meetings of the police chiefs, who now get together twice a year. On the bilateral side, the much hyped Joint Anti-Terror Mechanism (JATM) announced by the prime minister of India and president of Pakistan (Havana Agreement, September 2006) also seems to have gone nowhere. The Hindu, on October 25, 2007, had this to say: “The Oc- tober 22 meeting of the Joint Anti-Terror Mechanism (JATM) saw little other than mutual recrimination—recrimination, moreover, pulled verbatim from the last round of dialogue in March.” India regularly accuses Bangladesh of providing safe haven to the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) and Islamic groups like LIF001_ch6 6/26/08 1:36 PM Page 121

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Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami (HuJI), while Afghanistan accuses Pakistan of active support of the Taliban. The Bangladeshi newspaper The Daily Star reported on May 10, 2006 that SAARC police chiefs felt that STOMD was not “actively working, and they wanted to set up a ‘SAARCPOL’ along the lines of ‘EUROPOL.’” It is not clear whether the SDOMD (SAARC Drug Offences Monitoring Desk) is able to bring coordinated action against drug trafficking in the region. According to the US State Department’s International Narcotics Control Strategy Report for 2007, only India and Pakistan regularly share information through SDOMD. In August 2007, the Home Secretaries of India and Bangladesh decided to revive the Joint Work- ing Group (JWG) to exchange “actionable” information to check terrorism and render mutual cooperation. To what extent this will translate into action remains to be seen, in view of Indian suspicions that the Bangladesh-based terrorist group HuJI was involved in recent bomb blasts in Hyderabad.

MULTIPLE THREATS:THE CASE OF INDIA India suffers from both cross-border and homegrown religious extremism, as well as ethnic and left-wing insurgency. Many terrorist and insurgent groups operate across borders and are either based in other countries or cooperate with groups in other countries. Although there is no evidence of an official Al-Qaeda presence in India, many incidents since 2006 bear the marks of ideological inspiration from Al-Qaeda. Islamic extremist groups that are based in Pakistan or Bangladesh and operate regularly in India, principally in Jammu and Kashmir, include Lashkar-e- Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, Al-Badr, Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami, and Jamatul Mujahideen. It is believed that the top leaders of various violent Sikh groups, including Babbar Khalsa International, the Khalistan Commando Force, the International Sikh Youth Federation, the Khalis- tan Zindabad Force, and Dal Khalsa, are all based in Pakistan. Some observers have reported a nexus between Indian Maoists and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and among Maoists, the Pakistani ISI, and Islamic or Kashmiri groups. There have also been suggestions of operational coordination between Nepali Maoists and their Indian counterparts. The present Maoist (Nax- alite) movement in India is based largely in tribal areas in 170 districts in 12 states. During 2006, Maoists conducted 1,509 raids, killing 521 civilians and 157 security personnel. From January through October of 2007, they killed 172 security personnel and 197 civilians, mostly government servants or landlords. They also conducted attacks on jails in two states and freed the prisoners. In February 2007, they held a “Unity Conference” in an undisclosed location and decided to join the over-ground political opposition to several development projects being undertaken in tribal areas for the exploitation of natural resources. Although the connections between Indian Maoists and their Nepali counterparts, whom they consider to be LIF001_ch6 6/26/08 1:36 PM Page 122

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“revisionists,” have been disputed, both belong to the Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organizations of South Asia (CCOMPOSA). In North-East India, the major movements are two factions of Nagas (Isak Swu- Muivah and Khaplang), whose leadership is based in Europe, Thailand, and Burma. The Seven Sister States in North-East India comprise 75 major population groups that speak 420 languages and dialects out of a total of 1,652 Indian languages and dialects. Many fear the loss of identity of their separate cultures. Tripura, which had a 56 percent tribal population in 1921, now has less than 28 percent. There are 15 major insurgency movements in this area, accounting for

Burma and Its Energy-Hungry Neighbors

The discovery of large natural gas reserves in the Shwe field off the coast of Rakhine State, Burma, in January 2004 led to a race between China and India for access to Burma’s energy resources. Foreign companies that have signed agree- ments with Burma for oil and gas exploration rights include China National Offshore Oil Corporation, Essar Oil Ltd. (the first Indian private oil company to invest in Burma’s energy sector), and GAIL Ltd., a state-owned Indian gas company. In 2007, Indian and Chinese corporations signed contracts for further exploration in deepwa- ter offshore blocks near Rakhine State. Both countries have also invested heavily in hydropower in Burma. Rights to natural gas from the Shwe field became a focus of international con- tention. India had expected to obtain sole rights to it. However, a disagreement with Bangladesh over the building of a pipeline through that country stalled the plan. China took advantage of the delay to get first access to the gas and was awarded the right to build an oil-and-gas pipeline from the Shwe field to Yunnan Province. India’s recent abandoning of its long-standing hostility to the Burmese junta re- flects both its own interests and its concern about China’s increasing influence in Burma. China has supplied military equipment to Burma since the 1990s and has funded ports and military bases in Burmese territory. Burma gave the Chinese access to the Little and Great Coco Islands in 1992; this access allows China to moni- tor the movements of the navies of India and other nations throughout the eastern Indian Ocean. India also sees Burma as a means of access to the markets of South- east Asia and as a necessary partner for countering the insurgency in North-East India, since Burma has become a haven for the Indian insurgents. China’s and India’s investments in the energy sector in Burma have propped up the junta that is responsible for ethnic unrest, human rights abuses, widespread poverty, illegal drug trafficking, human trafficking and forced relocation, and the spread of HIV/AIDS. These problems do not respect national borders, and India and China can expect to suffer their consequences. Major infrastructure projects, such as oil-and-gas pipelines and dams, will only compound problems such as environmental degradation, forced relocation of villagers, unemployment, and increased militariza- tion in the areas where the projects are constructed.

Sources: Asia Times Online; Daily India; Mizzima News (India/Thailand); Myanmar Times. LIF001_ch6 6/26/08 1:36 PM Page 123

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1,366 incidents in 2006, involving the deaths of 309 civilians and 76 security personnel. Three hundred ninety-five insurgents were also killed. The Burmese Junta, at the request of the government of India, raided 50 camps of Naga (Khaplang) in January 2007. Cooperation was also extended by Bhutan in the form of the eviction of elements of the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), based mainly in Bangladesh, and Bodo insurgents in 2003. (ULFA, which wants a “sovereign Assam,” got its first consignment of arms in 1995 from the Khmer Rouge stockpile; the interme- diary was General Bo Mya of the Burmese Karen National Union. ULFA was responsible for 24 deadly bomb attacks in Assam in 2007. However, it has recently been losing public support. In January 2007, the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies in New Delhi cited results of a public opinion poll undertaken by Assam Public Works, an Assam NGO: 95.53 percent of the 2,564,128 respondents in nine districts did not support an independent Assam.) Even when a cease-fire is proclaimed, an insurgent group can still operate as a deeply entrenched parallel government. The headquarters of the Isak Swu- Muivah, a faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-IM) is found in Hebron, 40 kilometers from Dimapur, the official capital of Nagaland (called “Nagalim” by the Nagas). The headquarters is labeled Government of the People’s Republic of Nagalim (GPRN), and the parallel government has its own Parliament (Tatar Hoho) and an army based at Mount Gilead. It collects its own taxes (house tax, loyalty tax, and army ration tax), issues receipts for the same, and has an Accountant General, National Bureau of Intelligence, and Anti-Corruption Bureau. GPRN issues “work permits” to “migrant workers” from “India” for an annual fee of 130 rupees. Many recent terrorist incidents in India have been anonymous:

G March 7, 2006: synchronized bombings in Varanasi (21 dead) G July 11, 2006: Mumbai train serial bombings (209 dead) G September 8, 2006: Malegaon Mosque bombing (38 dead) G February 19, 2007: bombing of the India-Pakistan Samjauta Express train (68 dead, mostly Pakistanis) G May 18, 2007: Mecca Masjid bombing in Hyderabad (16 killed) G August 27, 2007: twin bomb blasts in Lumbini Park and a shopping center in Hyderabad (89 killed) G October 11, 2007: bomb attack on Ajmer Sharif (2 killed) G October 14, 2007: bombing in a Ludhiana cinema house (6 dead)

Evidence of an increased sophistication in methods has been seen in these attacks. The Mecca Masjid bombing was triggered through a cell phone, the first known application of this technique in the area. A cigarette bomb was used on June 20, LIF001_ch6 6/26/08 1:36 PM Page 124

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2007 against an ex-militant commander in Srinagar who had once belonged to Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. In most of these cases, the police were able to arrest only foot soldiers—those who transported explosives or rendered support services but did not have a hand in planning the incidents. Because so many of these incidents apparently focused on Muslim targets, a degree of uncertainty has arisen about the presumption that terrorist incidents are the work of Islamic zealots and perpetrated by Islamic extremist groups. In the wake of the Ludhiana bombing, there were indications that the dormant Sikh militancy might be reviving. M. K. Narayanan, national security adviser, noted that a lot of efforts were being made to revive Sikh militancy and he also saw signs of the reemergence of militant groups in Canada, the US, and Germany.

NEPAL AND SRI LANKA:PERSISTENT CONFLICT AND ELUSIVE PEACE Nepal One of the remarkable stories of the twenty-first century is how the outlawed Nepali Maoist movement transformed itself into a parliamentary body after sign- ing a peace deal in 2006, taking part in the interim government in April 2007, and offering its weapons for UN inspection. This movement, which had an armed force of 31,000, commenced its armed struggle in 1996; the conflict resulted in 13,000 deaths. The situation remains fragile, and there are complaints that the Maoist cadres are not allowing other political parties to enter their strongholds. In July 2007, they seized land belonging to former Prime Minister Surya Bahadur Thapa in Dhankuta district in Eastern Nepal. They have also been accused of ab- ducting people for parallel court trials for alleged criminal and antisocial activities. This did not prevent former US President Jimmy Carter from praising the Maoists and recommending that the US government engage in a dialogue with the former rebels, whose main demands have been abolition of the monarchy and proportional representation. Despite the politicization and domestication of the Maoist insurgency, other serious sources of armed political violence and insurgency remain. The Madhesis of the Terai region, which accounts for 40 percent of the population of Nepal, have advanced claims for federalism and proportional representation of their own. Eleven armed groups are operating in the Terai, including Jantantrik Terai Mukti Morcha and Janatantrik Terai Mukti Morcha, once part of the Maoists. The Madhesi Janadhikar Forum (MJF) also consists of former Maoists. Madhesi Peoples’ Rights Forum (MPRF) and the Madhesi National Liberation Front (MNLF), a Terai front of the Maoists, are the other main groups in this sensi- tive region. One of the worst cases of violence occurred between MPRF and MJF activists and the Maoist Youth Communist League (YCL) on March 21, 2007 in Gaur, when 29 Maoists were beaten to death. The Maoist leadership has LIF001_ch6 6/26/08 1:36 PM Page 125

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provoked the Terai parties by branding them as “hooligans” or pro-Royalists. They also allege that the Indian Hindu religious parties are meddling in the Terai region. The situation is one of “Dormant War,” as one Nepalese writer puts it. There are also reports that Hindu extremists led by “Parivartan,” a former police officer, have formed a “Nepal Defence Army.” This shadowy organization made its debut on June 20, 2007 by bombing the Maoist office in Kathmandu. The splits among Maoists in the Terai are reflected elsewhere in the country. Nepal faces grave uncertainty, and democracy has done more to accentuate conflicts than to help in their mediation.

Sri Lanka The conflict between the Sri Lanka government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has defied repeated attempts at solution, including international mediation. The conflict exhibits many of the characteristics of regular warfare, with the LTTE now having both aerial and naval military capacity. How- ever, the LTTE’s willingness to deliberately attack civilian targets clearly marks the conflict as a terrorist phenomenon as well. At least 70,000 lives have been lost in this conflict. Jane’s Intelligence Review (July 2007) provides a detailed account of the global financial operations of this insurgent outfit with a profit margin exceeding that of a multinational corporation. It has strategically posi- tioned around the globe well-organized financial and procurement structures that are integral to prolonging its campaign for a separate Tamil state. Two over- arching financial and procurement bodies that are the main source of LTTE money, manpower, and weapons are the Aiyanna Group and the Office of Over- seas Purchases (KP Department). The LTTE also has charitable front organizations to raise money from expatriate Tamil communities. LTTE uses neighboring countries like India and the Maldives for storage and pro- visioning of arms, explosives, and military supplies. In January 2007, a major sup- ply route for procuring ball bearings from Mumbai was unearthed with the arrest of an operative who is alleged to have sent almost six metric tons of ball bearings to Sri Lanka. In the same month, a consignment of gelex boosters (to augment ex- plosive charges) was detected going from Andhra Pradesh. In December 2006, live rockets were discovered in Tamil Nadu. On May 16, 2007, India helped the Mal- dives to sink an Indian fishing trawler hijacked by LTTE guerillas, which was found to be laden with explosives. The Sri Lanka government strongly suspects that the LTTE has moved its hideouts from Mannar to South India in response to repeated government offensives. A byproduct of this conflict has been the revival of a distinct Muslim political identity. Muslims, who once coexisted with the Sinhalese and the Tamils, feel vic- timized by the conflict, which they increasingly perceive as one between Sinhalese LIF001_ch6 6/26/08 1:36 PM Page 126

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and Tamils. The discourse and policies throughout the world in the aftermath of 9/11 have reinforced this sense of a threatened Islamic identity, adding to the increasingly combative attitude of Sri Lanka’s Muslims.

EMERGING ISSUES:BANGLADESH,MALDIVES, AND BHUTAN Bangladesh In the years before 9/11, Bangladesh suffered only 7 violent terrorist incidents, with a total of 58 fatalities. Between 2001 and 2006, there were 553 incidents, with 570 fatalities. This represents an increase 4.5 times the global average. Inter- national Crisis Group reported 450 simultaneous bombings in Bangladesh in Au- gust 2005. The first suicide bombings took place in December 2005. Four Islamic terrorist organizations are particularly significant in Bangladesh:

G The Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami (HuJI) has a strong presence in coastal areas (Chittagong, Cox Bazaar). There are reports that this group was set up in 1992 with Osama bin Laden’s help. It is also reported to have had close links with the Indian Aftab Ansari, who was involved in the attack on the Ameri- can Center in Kolkata in January 2002 and arranged the abduction for ransom of Kolkata “shoe king” Partha Roy Burman in July 2001. HuJI is reportedly connected with the Asif Reza Commando Force and also is alleged to be giving shelter to Assamese ULFA cadres. It is also reported to have been responsible for various terrorist incidents in India, including the Samjauta Express bombing, the Mecca Masjid bombing, and the Lumbini Park bombing. G The Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB) is reported to be pro-Taliban and fighting against the left-wing Purba Banglar Communist Party (PBCP). JMJB activities are in Northwest Bangladesh (Rajshahi and Jessore). How- ever, the hanging of the JMJB top leadership in March 2007 seems to have seriously damaged this organization. G The Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) is reportedly the origin of the JMJB. The JMB was linked to the Bangladesh National Party (BNP), which led the last civilian government, and to the Islamic Chatra Shibir, the student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami, which was in a coalition government with the BNP. G A new organization named Zadid al-Qaeda threatened on May 19, 2007 to blow up the 100-year-old Hardinge Bridge, connecting the southwestern and northern regions of Bangladesh. This group exploded bombs in Dhaka, Chit- tagong, and Sylhet railway stations early in May.

Also of note is the Purba Banglar Communist Party (PBCP), led by Mofakkar Chowdhury. Its objective is to capture power through armed struggle. Like the Indian Maoists, the group targets rich landowners and contractors and extorts levies from them. The group’s area of operations is Southwest Bangladesh (at LIF001_ch6 6/26/08 1:36 PM Page 127

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the border with West Bengal and in Khulna). The PBCP was associated with 13 incidents in 2007. There have been reports of the proscribed militants regrouping in southwestern districts. There are also concerns that Britons appear to be traveling to Bangladesh in increasing numbers for terrorism training. British counterterrorism officials have recently visited Bangladesh to brief local officials about this issue.

Maldives On September 29, 2007, a bomb exploded in the Maldives capital, Male, injuring 12 foreign tourists and raising fears of a Bali-type situation, in which foreigners were blamed for importing Western mores that offended local Muslims. President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom termed the attack a conspiracy by disgruntled political opponents who wanted to tarnish the reputation of the country. The blast came soon after Gayoom won a referendum to maintain the presidential system of government, a vote the opposition dismissed as “rigged.” International jurists have criticized the misuse of antiterrorism laws in the country to deal with civil disobe- dience and the continued detention of political opponents. Meanwhile, there are fears that local Muslim youth are undergoing radicalization.

Bhutan It is alleged that Bhutan has used Indian insurgent groups based in Bhutan, including ULFA (United Liberation Front of Assam) and NDFB (National Democratic Front of Bodoland), to force the Nepali-speaking population to emigrate. India has asked Bhutan to flush out the Indian insurgents, but as late as February 2007 there were reports that ULFA had abducted an Indian border roads engineer and kept him confined in Bhutan.

CRIME AS AN ENABLING ENVIRONMENT Small Arms International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) estimates that 75 million small arms are present in South Asia, 63 million of which are in civilian hands. India accounts for 40 million, Pakistan for 20 million, and Nepal and Sri Lanka for 3 million. In India, 47,311 lives were lost in the period between 1994 and 2005 as a result of small arms violence. In Pakistan, 250,000 illicit small arms had been confiscated and 129,980 people arrested for possession of small arms as of April 2003. A Tripartite Commission (Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the United States) was set up in 2003 to tackle this issue. South Asian syndicates appear to be using Bangladesh as a transit point for smuggling weapons. Forty percent of Bangladeshi illegal arms are used by individuals under age 18. In March 2005, LIF001_ch6 6/26/08 1:36 PM Page 128

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the Sri Lanka government set up the National Commission Against Proliferation of Illicit Small Arms (NCAPISA).

Narcotics The narcotics trade has various transnational dimensions. Pakistan serves as the processing and transshipment point for Afghan opium going to European heroin markets. Indian Jammu and Kashmir is an additional transshipment point for the Pakistani product. There is trade between Burma and India in opium, barbiturates, and methamphetamines. In each instance, the trade coincides with the presence of cross-border armed activity. Pakistan is the transit point for 36 percent of Afghan exports of opium. Pakistani traffickers have a major share in funding poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, although Pakistan itself has reduced its poppy cultivation area by 39 percent as a result of stringent measures by the NWFP (North-West Frontier Province) government. It is estimated that 14 percent of the Afghan population is actively involved in opium cultivation. Eighty percent of that opium is produced along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, with Helmand being the center of both this trade and the Taliban insurgency. With such a high profit margin in poppy production—an Afghan farmer can earn US$4,600 per hectare annually if he cultivates opium and only US$530 if he grows wheat—there is not much incentive at local levels to stop it. Efforts at herbicidal eradication of poppies have fueled insurgency in parts of Afghanistan where poppy crops are interspersed with legitimate crops. In October 2007, a consignment of A-999 grade heroin, manufactured in Afghanistan and packaged in Pakistan, with a street value of US$400,000 was seized from suspected couriers belonging to the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Toiba in Indian Jammu and Kashmir. Burma is the world’s second largest producer of illicit opium (380 metric tons in 2005—an increase of over 13 percent from 2004). Insurgent groups like the United Wa State Army and the Shans are deeply involved in this trade. India is a major importer of the drug, and the North-East India insurgent groups finance their activities by smuggling drugs to India from Burma. A serious riot took place on June 9, 2007 in Moreh in Manipur on the Burma-India border between two insurgent groups, the Kuki National Army (KNA) and the United National Libera- tion Front (UNLF) of the Meities, indigenous Hindu inhabitants of the area. Eleven people were killed in this dispute regarding illegal trade through the Moreh checkpoint. An article in Manipur Online (February 18, 2006) by Subir Bhaumik, BBC’s East- ern India correspondent, graphically described the problem. The International Narcotics Control Bureau (INCB) has said that 70 percent of the amphetamines available in the world are produced in the Golden Triangle, particularly Burma. Production increased from 100 million tablets in 1993 to 800 million in 2002. LIF001_ch6 6/26/08 1:36 PM Page 129

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Bhaumik says that Burmese drug cartels are using North-East India to send their cargo to Bangladesh. This has resulted in increased drug addiction in the region. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has estimated that there are at least 120,000 addicts in the region, and intravenous drug use has fueled the rise in HIV infections. One worrisome aspect is the emergence of collusion among rebels, drug lords, and officialdom. In Kolkata, the Narcotics Control Bureau raided a lab run by the Ah Hua network of Yunnan and North Burma in an apartment owned by

Afghanistan’s Illicit Trade

Afghanistan lies at the crossroads of Central Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East and has been a hub for trade going back to the time of the Silk Road. Passes through its surrounding mountain ranges provide easy access to and from these different regions. Its location is Afghanistan’s greatest asset regarding trade, but its greatest problem regarding geopolitics. Instability both within and around Afghanistan has made it a hotbed of illicit trade. The illicit trade ranges from the smuggling of legal goods such as timber and tea to the trafficking of drugs and small arms. Because of its position on the Silk Road, weapons have been brought into Afghanistan for centuries, with outside states spon- soring the central government being the greatest importers historically. Currently, weapons are procured in exchange for the fruits of Afghanistan’s biggest cash crop: opium used to make heroin. This trade has resulted in more than just a well-armed smuggling and drug trafficking mafia. Weapon ownership has never been illegal in Afghanistan and is seen as an inherent right of both individuals and groups. The country is awash in weapons and always ready to resume conflict. Afghans are generally pragmatic when it comes to illegal trade. Decades of turbu- lence and war and the lack of development in areas of public health, infrastructure, and internal security have led to an attitude of disregard for centralized government and any laws it might try to enforce. Bribing local officials in order to procure basic services or other favors is a fact of life and not viewed as wrong. This attitude ex- tends to illicit cross-border trade. Afghans do not necessarily differentiate between paying a “bribe” to a local power broker and paying a customs tariff to the government to obtain permission to trade a particular good. Traditional social networks based on ethnic and family ties still exert the greatest influence over life in Afghanistan, and cross-border illicit trade is bolstered by the strong ties between ethnic groups that span borders. In order to counteract illicit trade, the Afghan government needs to better provide what the people require of it. This includes a functioning and less corrupt justice system, a concentration on basic infrastructure and health care outside regional and district capitals, and an increase of security in the south and east of the country. Ap- pealing to the strong Afghan national pride could also help. If Afghans see illicit trade as a blot on their national honor and a tool of foreign influence in their affairs, they could be ready for a new paradigm.

Sources: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime; US Institute of Peace; Al Jazeera English; United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. LIF001_ch6 6/26/08 1:36 PM Page 130

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a police official. The six Chinese and Burmese nationals apprehended told officials that it was much easier to get the requisite poppy into Kolkata and sell the drugs in the Indian market than to transport tons of processing chemicals like acetic anhy- dride to remote Burmese locations from Kolkata.

Human Trafficking and Illegal Migration Burma is a source country for the men, women, and children trafficked to East and Southeast Asia for sexual exploitation, domestic service, and forced commercial labor. It is also a transit and destination country for women trafficked from China. India’s Bureau of Police Research and Development noted that India is a source, transit, and destination country for humans trafficked for economic and sexual purposes, often through export to the Middle East. It is estimated that 200,000 Nepali girls are in Indian brothels, and 12,000 new ones are trafficked into India each year. A study by the Institute of Social Sciences in Delhi notes that 31 percent of the victims rescued from Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata brothels are from Nepal. A survey of 412 brothel owners showed that 34 percent of them have never faced prosecution. Fifty-three percent avoided arrest by bribing police, and 29.1 percent said that police had a share in their income. The study also revealed that women and children from Assam and Bangladesh are trafficked to Burma and Southeast Asia via the Golden Triangle. One-third of these individuals were between 6 and 12 years old; children of 13 and 14 consti- tuted another quarter. Respondents considered trafficking “low risk” and “high profit.” Frontline (June 15, 2007) quoted a Pakistani lawyers’ study finding that 200,000 Bangladeshi women were sold into slavery in Pakistan at rates ranging from US$50 to US$2,000 each. Most of them were then sold onward to West Asia. There has also been a steep increase in the number of criminal networks devoted to smuggling Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, and others into developed economy labor markets. Migration from Bangladesh to India has grown from a few thousand in the 1970s to more than 3 million in 2002. Much of the domestic labor in Calcutta is now Bangladeshi and consists primarily of women and children. Living in con- stant fear of detection and deportation, they are liable to be underpaid and have little recourse if working conditions are unfair or even inhuman. The situation is similar for the hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi men who work in India’s factories and increasingly on construction sites throughout cities. There may be at least 700,000 such illegal migrants in Mumbai.

Financial Corruption and Currency Transfers Strict banking regulations in India do not seem to have prevented the generation of unaccounted-for cash. A New Delhi hotelier was caught in October 2006 in Hyder- abad with 30 million rupees (US$700,000) in cash. Another 1.3 million rupees (US$30,000) was found in his locker in Hyderabad. His accomplice, a senior In- LIF001_ch6 6/26/08 1:36 PM Page 131

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dian Administrative Service officer, was found to have 5.3 million rupees (US$120,000) in his possession. The origin or the purpose of this cash is unknown. Illegal transfers also proliferate. In April 2007, a closed foreign bank (First Cura- cao International Bank) reappeared as a software firm in Bangalore (Transworld ICT Solutions) and conducted illegal money transfers worth several billion rupees. After the Ajmer Sharif bomb blast on October 11, 2007, investigation of the money trail led to a separatist leader in Jammu and Kashmir named G. M. Bhat, who was involved in a hawala transfer of 50 million rupees (US$1.1 million) from Delhi to the valley. Bhat had entrusted the funds, which were concealed in gas cylinders, to two couriers who were arrested by the police in Udhampur after they were involved in a car accident. It is illegal transfers made through legitimate channels such as the hawala network that are the hardest to detect and most common. Indeed, a report in Times of India (October 19, 2006) said that funds for most terrorist incidents in India were transferred into India through legitimate channels, such as wire transfers or the hawala system. This calls into question the efficacy of the Reserve Bank of India’s regulations requiring individual banks to check sus- picious fund transfers.

GOVERNANCE FAILURES All countries in South Asia suffer from inordinate judicial delays and consequent miscarriages of justice. The official website of the Indian National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) listed 1,013,240 criminal cases pending in 2005. Of these, 899,127 were more than one year old and 31,606 had been pending for more than 10 years. The trial over a communal riot in Bhagalpur (Bihar) in 1989, which killed 1,070 Muslims, was concluded only in June 2007. The cases arising from the 1998 serial bomb blasts in Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu), which killed 50 people, concluded in April 2007. Sentencing is still going on over the 1993 Bombay serial blasts, which killed 257 people. The Asian Human Rights Commission has spoken of similar delays in Pakistan, where a trial in lower courts can take up to 5 or 6 years and an appeal up to 20 years. The fact that globalization has sharpened economic inequalities in India is put- ting serious pressure on security agencies. A recent report of the National Com- mission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector revealed that 836 million people (or 77 percent of India’s population) earn less than 20 rupees (US$0.45) a day. This is equivalent to the combined population of the United States, In- donesia, Brazil, and Russia. Dr. Arjun Sengupta, chairman of the Commission, said that three-fourths of the Indian population has been bypassed by the high rate of Indian economic growth. Rural and urban poverty in India is spurring crime. The NCRB reports that thirty- five “mega cities” (those with populations of over a million) saw an increase in In- dian Penal Code (IPC) crime, from 289,775 incidents in 2001 to 314,708 incidents LIF001_ch6 6/26/08 1:36 PM Page 132

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in 2005. Sixty percent of Mumbai’s 10.5 million people live in shanties. A 2006 study by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai found the homeless population to be between 250,000 and 500,000. Bangalore, the “Silicon Plateau” of India, has seen an unprecedented increase in crime. It has overtaken Mumbai and Delhi in crime, registering the fifth highest crime rate, or 9.2 percent of all the crimes recorded in India. Many experts ascribe the growing strength of the Maoist movement to administrative lapses by the central and state governments, which do not understand the underlying issues of terrorism and insurgency and treat the phenomenon only as a law and order problem. This is despite the formation of the Inter-Ministerial Group (IMG) headed by the Additional Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), charged with focusing on underlying socioeconomic causes. The Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) has estimated that 65 billion rupees (US$1.5

Afghanistan’s Ethnic Faultlines

Since the events of September 11, 2001, the conflict in Afghanistan has been viewed through the filters of the “war on terror” and radical Islam. It is illuminating, however, to apply a paradigm predicated on ethnic and tribal identities to current reconstruction efforts and the civil war that engulfed the country in the nineties. When Afghanistan’s post-Soviet communist regime fell in 1992, Kabul was seized by Tajik and Uzbek troops commanded by mujahideen warlords such as Ahmad Shah Massoud and Abdul Rashid Dostum, who would go on to become commanders in the Northern Alliance opposing the Taliban. This was the first time in modern Afghanistan’s history that the Pashtun majority did not control the capital. The internecine conflict that followed was dominated by these warlords with power bases split along ethnic lines, paving the way for the emergence of the Tal- iban in the Pashtun-dominated southeast and involving neighboring countries ranging from Pakistan to the Central Asian nations. NATO’s current reconstruction efforts continue to be hampered by this paradigm and the difficulty of understanding ethnic rivalry in the south. Adoption of the rhet- oric of anti-terrorism has obscured the nuances of Pashtun mobilization along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. This has traditionally been the product of sub-national or tribal aspirations rather than fundamentalist ideology. It only exacerbates the situation that many of the warlords associated with the Northern Alliance and the ethnic rivalries and crimes of the civil war now hold positions of power in the Afghan government. As long as this tension between democratization and ethno-tribal factionalism remains unresolved, stabilizing Afghanistan will be a difficult proposition. Although the Constitution provides for district, village, and municipal council elections, which might ameliorate ethnic tensions by enabling local participation and representation, they have not been held so far. Further, International Crisis Group reports point out that these elections are not mentioned in the Afghanistan Compact, the roadmap for future development that was the product of 2006’s London Confer- ence involving the Afghan government and the international community. Likewise, LIF001_ch6 6/26/08 1:36 PM Page 133

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billion) allocated for the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (NREGP) in 2005 and 2006 were not spent. Similarly, more than 15 billion rupees (US$340 million) meant for tribal development could not be released by the Min- istry of Tribal Affairs to state governments because the latter did not submit the requisite paperwork. D. Bandopadhyay, chairman of the Expert Group of the Planning Commission on “Development Issues to Deal with Causes of Discontent, Unrest and Extrem- ism,” blamed governments for not taking the initiative in resettling jobless tribal people displaced from Central India by large development projects. He cited estimates that, between 1951 and 2005, close to 55 million Indians were displaced because of development. Of these, only 28 to 30 percent have been resettled and rehabilitated; in the case of tribal people, that number is as low as 18 percent. He also said that the states are not interested in utilizing central funds in the Maoist

the Action Plan on Peace, Justice and Reconciliation—written in 2005 as an at- tempt to resolve the legacies of conflict—has yet to be implemented owing to the Afghan government’s reluctance to hold the Northern Alliance warlords account- able for their civil war crimes.

Principal Ethnic Groups of Afghanistan Pashtuns: Forming the majority of the Afghan population, they provide the main power base for the Taliban in the south and east and have strong cross-border links with the Pashtuns of Pakistan’s border regions. The current president, Hamid Karzai, belongs to this ethnic group, as do a number of his ministers. Tajiks: The second-largest ethnic group in Afghanistan and concentrated in the north and northeast, they were a strong element of the Northern Alliance and play a role in the current government, with Ahmad Zia Massoud, Ahmad Shah Mas- soud’s younger brother, serving as vice president. They are ethnic kin to the Tajiks of Tajikistan. Hazaras: Concentrated in central Afghanistan, they are Shia Muslims. Not being part of the Sunni majority led to their persecution by the Taliban. Although their condition improved after the US-led military action, some discrimination still exists. Uzbeks: Spread across northern Afghanistan, they have ethnic kin in Uzbek- istan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. The Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum was the principal leader of the Northern Alliance and continues to have a power base in the north. He serves as chief of staff to the commander in chief of the Afghan National Army. Turkmen: Concentrated in northwest Afghanistan along the border with Turk- menistan, they are traditionally a nomadic people. They have little representation in the current government.

Sources: International Crisis Group; Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; United States Institute of Peace; United Nations. LIF001_ch6 6/26/08 1:36 PM Page 134

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belt because the population there is not part of the “mainstream.” Another expla- nation for this neglect is that tribal peoples do not constitute the “vote bank” for any political party. In proposing possible solutions, he pointed to the West Bengal experience in the late 1960s, when the Naxal menace disappeared within 30 months of the redistribution of 1 million acres of land to the landless.

CONCLUSION The traditional separation of terrorism, insurgency, and organized crime is no longer appropriate, as groups have evolved and learned to adopt a variety of methods to achieve their goals. Connections between terrorism and organized crime can be seen in the way terrorists have used the tactics of kidnapping and extortion. A crossover between insurgency and transnational crime is apparent in the trade in illegal small weapons and narcotics, which some insurgent groups in the region (usually those in border areas) use to finance their activities. Although terrorism and sometimes insurgency are often seen in the West as manifestations of religious extremism, the earlier-cited study by academics at Guru Nanak Dev University points to an entirely different conclusion. The vast majority of participants—almost 40 percent—seem to have joined in the violence out of simple boredom (i.e., for “adventure and thrill”), with peer pressure and financial and material gain coming in as the second and third motivations. The suggestion that participants in terrorism and insurgency may lack a sense of inclusion and per- sonal consequence in the wider society points to two root causes of organized violence that were antecedents of terrorism and insurgency in the region: social and economic grievances. The solution to organized violence in the region lies in the constructive role of the state. Proper governance, which can assure the delivery of services, justice, and popular participation, will help the state gain legitimacy in the eyes of the popu- lace and eliminate many grievances, both economic and social. It can also address the fundamental problem found in almost all South Asian societies: tolerance and sympathy, among nonviolent social movements and critics of the state, for those who employ violence. A responsive state would enjoy legitimacy in the eyes of its critics, even if they opposed elements of state policy. Violent opponents of the state would experience a corresponding degree of opprobrium, rather than the sympathy that they enjoy today owing to the popular perception that they have no recourse but violence. An impediment to effective action is the poor bilateral relationships in the region, which hamper the investigation and prosecution of crimes related to terrorism and transnational crimes. Insurgencies often gain the support of states that wish to promote their own agendas. However, this is risky, as it is easy for the state to lose control as the insurgency can take on a life of its own. Unless states within the region can overcome their historical distrust, there can be no progress in eliminating terrorism and insurgency that cross national borders. LIF001_ch6 6/26/08 1:36 PM Page 135

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Armed violence in the form of terrorism and insurgency, although internal to states, often involves more than one state. Transnational crime, by definition, is a special case; the cooperation of more than one state is required if any one state is to respond effectively. While traditional techniques of armed response and intelligence remain essential, terrorism and insurgency must be tackled by addressing the trust deficit that exists both between governments and their people and between neighboring states. As parts of South Asia experience rapid industrialization and economic growth, the demand among those left behind for effective representation and equitable access to state resources will only increase. When governments instinctively resort to violence to resolve international and internal problems, they prevent a system for the peaceful redress of grievances from flourishing. They also inhibit their understanding of the dimensions of the threat, a critical function of intelligence. Armed response to violence against the state is of limited value if the underlying causes of conflict remain unaddressed and ill-understood. Like the new discontents that are contributing to armed violence against the state, these holistic approaches are outgrowths of modernization and development. A state that only adopts repressive measures, denying itself the panoply of policy in- struments that a complex society must deploy to meet increasingly complex threats, is doomed to see long-term threats destroy or inhibit social and political development.